You said I was a cockroach. Not a child. Not a neighbor. Not someone’s classmate, lover, or daughter. You said I was a cockroach, and just like that, I became something to be crushed. Words don’t just hurt—they can kill. And hate speech is never just talk. It’s the silent prelude to violence, the whisper before the scream. Let’s begin with Rwanda—1994. For months, even years before the Genocide against the Tutsi, the airwaves hummed with dehumanization. The infamous RTLM (Radio-Television Libre des Mille Collines) painted the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) and the Inkotanyi as literal monsters—boys with tails, long ears, and demon-like features. And the Tutsi—not people; they were ‘Inyenzi’—cockroaches, ‘Inzoka’—snakes. The kind of pest you squash without remorse. When the RPA, led by young men and women, came to rescue the people being hunted, many survivors whispered in disbelief, “Inkotanyi? But we were told they didn’t look like you...YOU, you look human!” That’s the thing about hate speech—it constructs a lie so vivid; it makes the truth unbelievable. It’s a slow poison, one broadcast at a time, one textbook page at a time, until mass murder is somehow justifiable. Hate speech doesn’t begin with guns. It begins in schools, in songs, in sermons, in jokes told at dinner tables. It becomes normalized. And by the time it graduates to machetes and mass graves, the world wonders how it got so bad. The movie, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, painfully shows this descent. Based on a true story, it follows two boys: one a Nazi’s son, the other, a Jewish child in a concentration camp. They meet at the camp’s fence, unaware of the world’s horrors. “I know Jews are bad people,” the Nazi boy says, parroting what he’s heard. The Jewish boy replies that Nazis are bad because they take people away. Neither fully understands, but both echo hate they didn’t invent. In the end, they both die the same death—consumed by an ideology that neither of them chose. That’s the final irony of hate. It doesn’t just destroy its intended target. It consumes everyone in its path. So, how do we define hate speech? According to the UN, and other human rights definitions, hate speech vilifies, humiliates, or incites hatred against individuals or groups based on their identity—be it race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, gender, disability, or orientation. But it doesn’t always look like shouting in the streets. Sometimes, it’s a meme. A whisper. A shrug. An unchecked joke. We see it today. Right now. In eastern DR Congo, the Banyamulenge and the Congolese Tutsi minorities continue to be persecuted. Not just by terrorist militia groups like FDLR which was birthed by the defeated genocidal regime’s army and Interahamwe militias, but by leaders who enable the same hate speech that led to Rwanda’s darkest chapter. The FDLR weren’t just another rebel group—they were, and are, a genocidal terrorist organization. After fleeing Rwanda in 1994, they were welcomed and allowed to regroup in refugee camps in DRC, not disarmed. Their mission didn’t change: finish what they started. Over time, their hate was not only directed toward Rwandans, but extended to Congolese Tutsis or however they thought looked like ‘the hated’. The result: Displacement. Death. Fear. Some fled to Rwanda. Others remain in DR Congo, vulnerable. And the ideology is still hovering—because the speech that fuels it is still being aired, printed, and passed down. Some Congolese leaders have called Rwandans ‘invaders’, ‘aliens’, and many more other ridiculous names. Others have publicly denounced Tutsi communities, fanning the flames of nationalism by scapegoating ethnic groups. Online, hate speech is rampant: caricatures, slurs, and misinformation targeted at communities based solely on descent. The algorithm has become an amplifier. And we still hear, “It’s just words.” But hate speech is never just words. In Rwanda, it sounded like jokes on the radio. In Nazi Germany, it was propaganda posters. In DR Congo, it’s tweets, speeches, and songs. The book, From Classrooms to Conflict, by Elisabeth King, exposes how dangerous it is when hate is taught. It’s not just told—it’s taught. When children grow up believing that someone different from them is less human, they become adults who can act on that belief without flinching. So, what does hate speech feel like? It feels like fear. Like being named and blamed. Like shrinking in your own skin. Like knowing that your name, your face, your very being makes you a target. And what happens when it’s left unchecked? Genocide. Ethnic cleansing. Social fragmentation. Children turned into killers. Neighbors turned into enemies. It’s true that countering hate speech requires courage. Speaking up isn’t easy when the mob is loud. But silence isn’t neutrality—it’s permission. Counter-speech is our only antidote. It’s in the stories we tell, the truths we protect, and the communities we uplift. One voice matters. But collective courage, that’s where change begins. Especially in Rwanda, where we’ve seen how bad it can get—and how far we’ve come. No nation is immune. No society too advanced. So let us listen carefully. Let us question the jokes, the memes, the off-hand comments. Let us teach our children to think before they echo. Because what you said once changed my name. Broke my heart. Made them kill me. Let’s make sure we never let words become weapons again.
